Medigene in for up to $1.5 billion under broader pact with Bluebird Bio

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German biotech firm Medigene has secured a wider remit under a collaboration with U.S. peer Bluebird Bio on a technology that boosts the immune response to cancer, increasing the pool of potential milestone payments to $1.5 billion.

The number of projects in the alliance, which has Medigene contributing screening tools to identify promising T-cell receptors (TCR), will rise from four to six, Medigene said in a statement on Monday, sending its shares 8 percent higher.

“If successfully developed and marketed through several indications and markets, Medigene could receive up to $250 million in milestone payments per TCR program in addition to tiered royalty payments on net sales up to a double-digit percentage,” Medigene said.

Medigene agreed its alliance with Bluebird in September 2016, working on modified T cells, one of the immune system’s main weapons, to better target specific tumor cells.

Bluebird is best known for its progress in a class of customized cancer drugs known as chimeric antigen receptor T-cells, or CAR-Ts.

Other companies working on T cell receptor (TCR) technologies include GlaxoSmithKline, Britain’s Immunocore, which is backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, or U.S. biotech group ImmunoCellular .

As part of the broadened contract, Medigene will receive an additional one-time payment of $8 million plus increased research and development funding.

Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by John Stonestreet and Maria Sheahan